


The River Eats Children

by K Faaborg (EliasGrey)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliasGrey/pseuds/K%20Faaborg
Summary: The river is a source of life for the surrounding farmland. But it has always needed sacrifices.





	The River Eats Children

The river eats children. The locals never acknowledge it; the visitors that come and go with the color of the autumn leaves never notice. But the river eats children, and I notice.

Not every year, and and they’re not always children; I think that’s why no one else has seen the pattern yet. And sometimes they’re only bitten, maimed, not swallowed whole. If you can survive until your thirties, you seem to be safe. But I don’t know. There are a lot of old people in this town too. Maybe they just don’t appear in the newspaper when they get eaten. The only sure way I’ve seen so far is to run. If you escape this town built on dark marshes you can shake the river. Even just the 30 miles down river to the next big city seems to help, but the best way to run is north and west- away from the river and away from where it flows to. 

Other river towns aren’t like this, I think, but then again I’ve never lived in other river towns. Maybe it’s the marshes that pull you down, but I don’t think that’s all of it. The marshes are just the trap. The river flows the wrong way here, and that’s why it’s hungry.

Or maybe when people first built this town they made a deal with the river- instead of flooding it’s banks and eating its fill of the land, the people would build walls and drains and channels and feed it something else. There were a lot of murders here in the early days of the town-lots of transients people wouldn’t notice or care about when they went missing. Loggers, railway workers, ladies of the night, men running from the law.

It’s a family town now.

Or maybe it wasn’t even a deal, maybe they didn’t notice that the river was starving with the levy in place. Now, most of the time, the river eats college students. There are a lot of them here, and they’re vulnerable without their families. That’s how I first realized the river was eating children, long before I began to feel it pulling at me- most of the college students end up drowned. Especially the boys. Now though, I think the river can eat you so long as you’re in the town; life in the valleys just over the bluffs is harder, less convenient, but they seem safer.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP, I have more writing planned as well as some art and possibly a video.


End file.
